Presenting in English 2 Fall 2018
2018.11.27
W-Q-J
Continued going over Chapter 4
Reviewed instructions for Major Assignment 2 and get more info from Six Minutes, including a few examples.
Remember, next week is showtime!
That's right, week 14 is the time for you to present and upload your final major assignment to Canvas. The classroom will be available for you to prepare your presentations during our regular class time Dec. 4th, but it's up to you to organize your audience during that week.
The deadline for your final major project is midnight Dec. 8th. Please watch and give helpful feedback to two classmates on Canvas before we meet again Dec. 11th. We will be watching a few of these when we meet that day.
Come back Week 15 to enjoy watching the results.
See you in class!
JBH
2018.11.20
This session we hit the ground running with our weekly word, quote and joke, then moved on into the middle of Section 4 dealing with emphasis, focusing, softening, and repetition. We will continue in Section 4 when we meet next week. Don't forget, Week 14 is the time for you to prepare and upload your final major assignment to Canvas. The classroom will be available for you to prepare your presentatoins during our regular class time Dec. 4th, but it's up to you to organize your audience during that week. Deadline for your final major project is midnight Dec. 8th. Please watch and give helpful feedback to two classmates on Canvas before we meet again Dec. 11th. We will be watching a few of these when we meet that day.
2018.11.13
We started off this session with some good news and some bad news. First, the good news: We all passed our mid-term exam projects.
Then we got into the bad news: There is still something missing that we need to improve - Ethos, Pathos, & Logos.
We discussed the relative importance of each of these characteristics, and the pluses and minuses of our own presentations, both in the past and the future.
The instructor let the class know that he saw a trend in our first major projects in that they could have been much stronger, especially in terms of ethos, credibility and believability. A speaker can't just say something is true; they need to provide evidence to prove it.
We then moved into the book, Unit 4, on emphatic stress and softening.
2018.10.30 & 11.6
These weeks we looked over Sections 2 and 3 in the text, going over how to use visuals and speak about them, and working together to practice using chunking, pacing, stressing for emphasis, pausing and intonation and other vocal strategies to improve our presenting technique. We worked through Section Three in the text, and were left with some audio assignments and sound scripting homework assignment to complete for next week.
Please follow the instructions for the sound scripting tasks (1, 2, 3) on pages 43 through 46, along with Task 2 on page 46. Bring a hard copy of these tasks to class with you next week to discuss in class.
Also, get started thinking about your topic for the next major assignment, which we will again be recording and uploading week 14, the week of Dec. 4th. Instructions for that assignment are linked below. We will talk about it in class next week
Major Assignment 2
See you then!
JBH
2018.10.16
We started off this class with the usual Word, Quote, and Joke of the day before moving on to get clear about our upcoming major assignment to be uploaded Week 8 (Deadline midnight 2018.10.27)
You should present your speech to a small audience (at least three people), upload the video on YouTube and share the YouTube link in the discussion area of Canvas. Everything should be uploaded and posted before midnight Saturday, Oct. 14th. Before we meet as a class week 8, please give feedback to at least two classmates based on the evaluation sheet in the instructions for the speech. There are also some tips for that speech assignment at Six Minutes.
We will not have regular class Week 8; use that time (or any time during the week) to present and record your speeches. The classroom will be available for you to use at class time and I will be on campus. Let me know if you have any questions or if I can help with anything. We will meet again as a class the regular time Week 9 to watch some videos and give helpful feedback in person.
See you in class!
JBH
2018.10.02
In class, we wrapped up Section 1 in the text and continued in Section 2, dealing with visuals. We will continue with Section 2 when we meet again Oct. 16th, as well as getting prepared for our major assignments. The Major Assignment Presentation will need to be videorecorded in front of a live audience of at least three people, including your camera person. Please make sure to show your audience on the same (unedited) video before you begin your presentation.
We already started putting presentation ideas together. Although we will not meet in class Oct. 9th because of a holiday, please submit a proposal for your major assignment (in canvas). Please give us more than a title or topic -- you do not have to have the whole thing completed, but you do need to know where you are going before we meet again Oct. 16th.
You will need to decide where and when you will create your presentation video. We will not meet Week 8, so the classroom will be available at that time. However, you need to coordinate with classmates because there may not be enough time for everyone to make a video during our class period.
Your Major Assignment should be uploaded to YouTube and a link posted in the Canvas discussion area by midnight Oct. 27th, so classmates will have time to provide helpful feedback before we meet Oct. 30th.
If you have questions, please ask them when we meet Oct. 16th.
Thanks!
JBH
2018.09.18
Presenting in English
--Tips for your Videos
Here are a few things to keep in mind for your video assignments.
1) Feel free to practice the speeches as much as you want and watch yourself to find areas for improvement. For the one you submit, however, do it in one take. Don't start over if you mess up because in a real situation you would just have to keep going. If there is a major distraction, such as a child calling for you, then act accordingly. Also, don't edit your submission; this is speech class, not a video production class. There is no editing in real life presentations.
2) Ideally, we'd like to see you from the waist up, not just your face and shoulders. Stand for all speeches.
3) You might want to practice speaking to the camera a few times with the camera turned off. A lot of people, myself included, don't really like being recorded, so you might want to de-sensitive yourself to it.
4) Watch your video before you post it to make sure that the sound is acceptable. It doesn't have to be professional quality, but it should be understandable.
5) Post your videos as Unlisted, not Private.
Introduce Yourself to Your Classmates and Professor
First, a Practice Video
One thing that makes this course different from other courses you've taken is that you need to record, save, and upload videos of your speeches. For some students, this will be easy because you've either done this before or you pick up on this kind of thing easily. For others, this may not be the case. Therefore, please start working on this skill set this week; don't wait and take a chance on not submitting your first video correctly and on time.
Please record, save and upload a quick practice video on YouTube. It can be very brief and on anything you want. It's ungraded, but please post a response in Canvas, including the YouTube link to your practice video, after you've done it. For the Canvas discussion title use “Your Name/Practice Video.” If you want, you can delete it after this week. The important thing is that you know how to do it.
And don't just upload an existing file. Part of the process is recording, saving the recording as a distinct file, and uploading.
Please use landscape orientation for the video: this means wide, not tall. It fits better into the YouTube frame.
Finally, please set your videos as Unlisted, not Private. If they are Unlisted, only those of us with the link can view them, not the whole world. But if they are private, no one can view them.
Second, Introduce Yourself to Your Classmates and Professor
We will work closely together this semester, sharing opinions and comments.
We will also participate in several peer review sessions. All of these exchanges are easier and more comfortable if we know one another a bit better. Please take a moment to introduce yourself and share something about you in a three- to five-minute video on YouTube and post it to the Canvas discussion area.
The bullets below are some ideas to guide your posting.
* Your name, what you do, your hobbies, etc.
* Your greatest communication challenges.
* A little known fact about you
* The best communicator you know, and why
Take time to review the posts of your classmates and respond to at least two.
Again, post to Canvas and title the discussion “Your Name/Intro”
Please post your introduction video ASAP—before the holiday Sept. 25th morning. That will give your classmates time to respond before we meet again Sept. 25th. I will also be posting the first major assignment over the holiday, so while we miss a day of class, we will keep moving outside the classroom. I will expect a proposal for your first major assignment when we meet in two weeks,so please make that decision before our next class session.
-- First major assignment. (To be posted to Canvas by Oct. 27th)
See you in two weeks!
JBH
2018.09.11
In class, we cracked open the text to get an overview, then got started in Section 1 looking at how to put together introductions and openings for a presentation or speaking event.
For our next class meeting week 3 please complete all exercises you can do on your own in Section 1 (including listening to the audio files), and be ready to continue working from the book. We will also talk about how to upload videos of ourselves talking to YouTube and post them to the class discussion area of Canvas for our first exercise to share online with each other.
Thanks!
JBH
2018.09.04
Our first day got off to a good start with students and the instructor introducing themselves to each other.
The second item on the day's agenda was demonstrating our regular daily routine for starting class with a Word, Quote, and Joke of the Day. Don't forget, someone needs to present those at the beginning of class each week. Please write the Word and Quote of the Day on the board or have them ready to go on the classroom computer when class begins on the hour. If one of these is your job and you are going to be absent, please find a replacement. If there is no replacement the week after you have taken one of the roles, it will be your problem (or pleasure) again. Instructions for the Word, Quote, and Joke of the Day are included below.
Word, Quote, and Joke of the Day
In Presentation and Discussion classes, I like to follow a practice picked up from Toastmasters Public Speaking Groups. Every session, we start with a Word, Quote and Joke of the Day.
It's not hard to find a word of the day. Ask Mr. Google for "Word of the Day." some good sites include Merriam-Webster's English Learner's Word of the Day, the New York Times Word of the Day, and many others. Go to the main site, then find a Word of the Day. But remember, I want you to be selective and find a Word of the Day that you think is useful and unusual. Please do not use the current day’s Word of the Day. I want to learn some vocabulary too, and if all my classes use the same word every day, it’ll get pretty boring.
For the Quote of the Day, you can google for a quotation or go to www.quotationspage.com. There, you will find quotations by authors from Einstein to Confucius (공자) on subjects from love and success to happiness and character. Please take a couple minutes to choose a quotation that is especially meaningful for you, and tell your classmates about the deeper meaning you see underneath the words. I suggest we use quotes that have a source connected, because in my experience, you can often learn a lot about what a message means when you also consider the source.
For the Joke of the day, I suggest you go to www.google.com and search for “ESL jokes” or “funny jokes” or “clean jokes” or something similar. I’m not a prude, but in a classroom setting I think we should keep the jokes publicy acceptable. It is also important to try to find jokes that are funny, but not too difficult for most of your classmates to understand.
Remember, if you did the Word, Quote, or Joke of the Day, you have total power to pick the WQJ victim for the following week. If you forget to choose a replacement, or the person you chose does not show up for class, you will get another chance to show the class your W-Q-J presentation skills.
FOR NEXT WEEK:
Please get the book Presenting in English, by Mark Powell, (Heinle CENGAGE Learning) at the HUFS bookstore or elsewhere; pre-read and be ready to discuss the first unit when we meet week 2.
Also, be ready to get started on our first speaking project and learning to upload presentation videos to the class discussion area.
See you in class!
JBH
